August 22, 2003

I got to school on Thursday and on Thursday night people were already trying to get me drunk. I refused to “get drunk” but I took a fair amount over the course of the evening and woke up in the morning with chapped lips, dry skin, and the feeling that I had been stranded in the desert with no water for a month.

For some reason my meal card wasn’t working; I got into a dining hall once on Thursday to get a salad (that’s all that I ate the whole day) and since I couldn’t go back in I didn’t eat anything until Friday at 6:00 in the evening. That’s totals up to about 60 hours with no significant meal. I was starving. After I got the card fixed, I found out that they were not serving dinner that evening in the dining halls because all the freshmen were supposed to have a “picnic” near the center of campus. I finally got this vegan meal that consisted of a make-it-yourself sandwich of pita bread, slightly smashed tomatoes, cucumber slices, soggy lettuce, and this weird yellow exotic grainy gloop that was disgusting but it all tasted sooooo good. I want to know what the yellow stuff is. I’m not sure what curry tastes like but I think it might have had some sort of curry flavor in it. Anyway I remember something in the spice cabinet at home had the same flavor as the yellow stuff. I got two meals, (both were the same thing), and stuffed myself; now I feel a little sick.

I love being here on campus. I’m already on the mailing lists of four campus groups. I went to some sort of queer get-together and wasn’t impressed; not many of the guys were attractive to me so it’s not like there’s a great chance of me finding a soul mate right away through the gay and lesbian organization. Don’t get me wrong now, I’m not THAT superficial; for the most part the unimpressive aspect of the groups is not that there is no one hot but that they didn’t seem to be wortwhile. There were three cute guys, though, and I talked with one of them. I did not sign up for the gay club. Maybe later. I am yet to be impressed. I am impressed, however, with Amnesty International.

August 15, 2003

This evening, as with all Thursday evenings over the summer, I went to the club. Since school is starting next week this might have been my last time at the club, (and I’m just fine with that!) but next Thursday might work out for one last trip depending what’s going on with me moving in to the dorm and all.

Even though I would say I love going to the club to see people I like and to get new phone numbers and friends, I sometimes feel a little depressed afterword when I think about the fact that all the guys I’m the most attracted to don’t give me the time of day and I know there is a snowball’s chance in hell of me getting any attention from them. I shouldn’t really care since I’m not really looking for the ultra-hot-slutty-gay-boy type at all–I was never interested in the “popluar” group in high school or in my life in general and I don’t look to make an exception for the gay scene either–but it just bothers me knowing that there is a reality that some people in this world are “too good” for me. Naturally, one’s gaze tends to gradually stray away from the perfect person of the desired sex toward the “best” person of the desired sex, and people don’t seem to realize what they’re losing. I’m not going to suggest that my own inclinations don’t follow the same pattern.

This week though, it seemed like everyone there at the club (at least all the guys) was hot and not just a select few. There was a good number of new people and they were more scattered since they were new and the overly attractive types hadn’t had time yet to conglomerate in the center where they would become too intimidating for people like me to break in. Talking to a friend of mine, though, I noticed that everyone I thought to be hot wasn’t really hot in his eyes at all, and everyone he thought was hot wasn’t really attractive to me. There were a few guys we agreed on, but for the most part we liked very different types. And what’s more, he would find someone attractive and be terrified to talk to this individual, when all I could say or think was “dude, you are so much hotter than he is, go for it and I’m sure he’ll be lucky to have someone like you be after him.” But for either of us to try to convince the other to go for it was pointless because both of us are really too chickenshit to talk to boys.

Then when some of the hot guys came over and told me they knew me from somewhere and that we had talked for hours and I had absolutely no recollection, (yes, I felt like a total ass for not making the connection between the voice on the phone and the person I am now talking to, but in my defense it’s not as if I actually forgot the conversation and once it clicked I knew everything I was supposed to know) I started feeling better about the evening, and then to make things still better I started playing eyeball tag when I saw a few of the hot guys staring right back at me. It was just wierd that in one way or another everyone I really liked came to me. Attraction is all about subjectivity. We all ended up making fun of the really hot guys when they all thought they were sooo good looking and tried to sign up to be models when this talent scout from a modeling agency was looking for guys at the club. Everyone that the people from the modeling agency picked looked much more like the “average” type than the “hot” type, in my opinion. I guess no one is hot to everybody; you’re officially a good looking person if you get twenty percent to like you and no one on Earth gets more than sixty. Add that to the fact that you can lose all attraction to somebody in an instant when they open their mouths. Come to think of it, no one I have ever looked at for the first time and thought “damn he’s hot” ever turned out to be attractive to me in the long run. It’s always when they’re just “okay” and you look twice and they start to grow on you because they have great personalities that you have a real crush that you would like to turn into a relationship.

I don’t know if what I’m saying is making any sense, but I’ll just say that the important thing is that tonight gave me a better attitude about my chances of finding the relationship I want someday. I was always so concerned that the best guy wasn’t going to like me because of my looks that I didn’t stop to think that the perfect guy and the best guy are such different concepts. I’d much rather have the perfect guy for me than the best, most desired guy in the group. It’s not as if I’ve had a serious revelation here and my attitude will change forever, but I know now not to worry and that everything will work out, and I know that I will not be happy with the hot guy; anyone can be hot if I want him to be, and what’s seen as hot to everybody else isn’t what is hot to me. I will be happy with the right guy and I hope it’s only a matter of time before he comes along or I realize that I already know him and find out who he is.

August 10, 2003

My parents said they were going shopping, so I agreed to go along. I figured it might be the last time I get them to buy me clothes. We got to the store in the early afternoon, late summer sun lingering through the glass entryway forming slanted parallelograms on the dark carpet.

An hour later we were still there. As I stood in the aisle holding a pair of bluejeans, meandering impatiently while my mom fumbled through skirts, I saw a strange girl step toward my father.

I looked at my sister as she cocked her waist to one side, resting a fist on a curved hip.

What was her name? She seemed alien to me. The word “Angela” brings to mind an image of an eight-year-old girl sitting cross-legged on the family-room floor watching Little Mermaid for the fifth time in a row. She’s eating a self-made mixture of butter and brown sugar out of a plastic cup, and I’m wrinkling my nose at it, rudely hovering to look in the cup so I can chastise her about some nonsense. This rebellious-looking teenager wearing stretch jeans and a tight shirt didn’t seem to be the same person.

I followed as she swayed down the aisle, confident and sassy. She’s the girl who, still to this day, tapes Saturday morning cartoons so she can watch them later when she has time, and wears baggy sweatshirts to hide her body because she’s not ready for guys to like her. It’s cliche, but I’m realizing that she’s turning into a woman with a mind and soul all her own and it hasn’t occured to me before.

She and I never talk. We have an occasional exchange of “stop it,” or “change the channel.” I’ll ask “you’re wearing that?” or bark, “would you turn that down!” But I don’t really know her anymore, and I doubt she knows me either. She the stranger living in the basement, yet I’m her older brother and I could crush her with a cross word if I wanted.

I’m about to move out of the house. I’ll live away from her, and I’ll gradually release our grudge of sibling rivalry, forgetting all the petty things that she’s done – or I think she’s done – to me. Maybe we can be close someday, like we were a long time ago. My parents always say that siblings are more important than friends because they don’t come and go like friends do, and I still think that they’re full of shit in they way they deride ordinary friendship. But that doesn’t mean that Angela might not someday be a sister and a friend. I hope she grows up to be a lawyer or politician. Maybe she’ll be a teacher. An artist. A dancer. I guess I’ll just step back and watch, for now, but I can’t wait to see it.

Lately my life seems to have been degraded to a blur of superficiality. I want something badly right now but I don’t know what it is. I haven’t written anything worthwhile for the entire latter half of the summer, and I feel like I’ve wasted a lot of time. I’ve gone out and had some fun, and I’ve been doing things I’m glad I’ve been doing, but I haven’t taken the time to put it all down on paper so that anyone else can share and understand, and I haven’t figured out how to look at the recent days in terms that can make them seem meaningful to me. My sex drive has been going through the roof lately which has been a distraction from the poetry of life, (Although I can’t deny that it brings to the world a type of poetry of it’s own…hey boy in the green shirt… yeah you, across the room… smile for me? Yeah just come on over, sexy, look this way, please… over here now… You’re probably out of my league but if you see me staring you’ll know I want you, so just maybe I’m lucky enough to be your type. Maybe you’re smart. Maybe you’re my soulmate and it’s about to click in our minds when we lock eyes that we already know each other from some mysterious place. Yeah right. But oh, nice smile. Nice lips. I love the way you walk; not too masculine, not too feminine, not too… And ooh… nice shoulders… nice back… nice style… SO HOT… I wish… Mmmm…poetry. The only catch is that it’s not coming from me. It’s all him. His body… His voice…) and despite all this sexual energy, alas, I have not managed to get any. I’ve whittled away my days trying to obtain something I can’t visualize, without once being able to live in the moment, and I’ve squandered my nights sitting up on the side of the bed with a CD player or quietly playing the guitar in my boxer shorts, with a hyperactive mind that refuses to turn off and a bored desperate horny numb feeling, wondering how I’ll ever manage to survive with a early class schedule come two weeks when school begins (seeing as how I’m an insomniac and all.) Am I bipolar? I doubt it; one must get depressed to be manic depressive. I suppose one must be manic as well, and I am neither. I don’t know what’s wrong with me: all in all I feel okay and I’m surprised how disconcerned I am with the fact that the beginning of the rest of my current living experience is about to be initiated in hippyville less than 14 days from now. Two more weeks of the one long timeless blur of a single day that is summer and FLASH I’ll be in an alien place with alien people (what’s all this–do they think they know me?) and have to deal with it all from there. And it doesn’t even bother me. I’ll be on my own, who knows if I’ll survive it or not. I don’t feel like I need to prove anything to anyone or even to myself right now. Is it possible that in this very awkward un-zen time period I am ironically and miraculously comfortable in my individuality? Lets see…

I am Matt.Matthew Tristan Pizzuti. Okay, words mean nothing. Move on.I’m an American. (And? So is everyone I know.)I’m gay. Hmm… still seems a little creepy that I AM that one queer minority of all minorities, that one in ten, that subject of so much controversy, the one group that I really would like to support but I don’t necessarily want to be a part of. But here I am alone so who gives a shit if it’s guys or girls who I WOULD fuck if I had a chance since I’m not fucking ANYBODY at all. Sexuality has no meaning right now. I guess all things considered I’m actually not feeling those nagging insecurities with the whole gay thing that the guys always feel long after they come out and have TOLD everyone that they’re finally not only comfortable (liars) but even “proud” of it.I’m… liberal? Whatever. Views are subjective. Usually it’s an important part of who I am but the republican president, the religious right, the current status of global warming and urban sprawl and civil rights–isn’t effecting me sitting here at my computer writing my livejournal. I guess I’m starting to realize how dumb it is that I even care so much about that anyway. I mean, it’s one thing to care about the world. It’s another to act like there can really be a “liberal” or “conservative” side to it.
I don’t even care to list anything else about me. Am I ugly? Hot? It doesn’t effect me at the moment. Rich? Poor? The only wealth I have at my hands right now is a keypad.

I guess it’s true. Nothing matters. I am so zen! What do I conclude from all this? Who the fuck knows. But hey… no shit! I actually made myself tired! I think I’ll go to bed now, right after I spell check this.

August 6, 2003

Wow I guess it’s been a long time since I’ve written in here. Very disappointed in how few-to-none comments I got on the Abortion vs. Affirmative Action entry. Is the thought too out there for anyone to try to tackle with a response? Does everyone just agree with me and see no need to add anything? More like I have no readers.

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of going swimming and getting sunburned, going to the club and all the old stuff I always do, only a little less enthusiastically. I finally got my new computer for college and I’ve also been downloading music. Everyone says I should wait until I get to school to download because a 56K connection sucks and I’ll have a much faster modem in my dorm, but personally, I think I kind of enjoy dragging out downloads. I love previewing the song over and over and hearing the intro ten times before the next part loads… all the building energy of the song is dragged out over a longer time period as you hear the first fourth of the song so many times and anticipate the next part. You really hear the music that way and not just the lyrics. When the song finally loads, it seems to sound better if you’ve waited for it and gotten into the music.

Then I’ve been doing some taking the music I’m downloading and trying to play it on guitar by ear. I tuned my guitar high and it started pulling the front off, which sucks ass, but it’s fixed now, and anyway, this is not important. I guess I’ll come back later and write here when I have something worthwhile to say.